Leveraging Pre-K - Grade 12 Experience

St. Margaret’s recognizes the unique benefits of a preschool through grade 12 school, and creates opportunities throughout the school year for all Tartans to spend time together working toward shared goals and engaging in experiential learning projects. Our students have told us, young and older, that they enjoy being together, learn from each other, and we know that the benefits of time together are immeasurable.

One annual event for the community to come together is Literacy Day, where Lower, Middle and Upper School students, faculty and staff join in spirited activities focused on building community around the topic of reading, stories and literacy.

“Our youngest and oldest students work together creating and sharing stories, having fun and making new friendships, showing their school spirit and care for each other and the world around them. Literacy Day is a perfect all-school activity underpinning of our mission and values as a school community,” said Head of School Will Moseley.

Literacy Day 2016 kicked off in the school’s central Highlands Quad with students, faculty and staff from Lower School to Upper School dressed in a sea of blue, green, red and yellow extending the longstanding Lower School tradition of House Leagues to the entire school by organizing in teams and dressing by house colors. Young students, worked together with older students in 72 different house teams, 18 teams within each house, each led by a faculty or staff member.

Teams participated in a lively storytelling activity in which a ball of yarn was tossed around a team circle, and each person who received the yarn added to the story started by the pervious person. By the end of the activity, students had made new friends, developed a unique and beautiful web reflecting their very creative, and even silly stories. The storytelling didn’t stop there as they engaged in a group read of the book “Elephant in the Dark.”

House League teams gathered again in the afternoon to launch the St. Margaret’s Pass It Forward Literacy Project, a postcard service project created by the Library team aimed at spreading awareness for the importance of reading and helping to fight illiteracy in the world. In the weeks leading up to the event, Lower School families were asked to address three Pass It Forward Literacy postcards. To build on the global theme of the day, the same small student groups worked together to identify the postcard destinations, look up interesting facts about the destination city or country, and then and place stickers on wall-sized maps.

Head of School Will Moseley

“Our youngest and oldest students work together creating and sharing stories, having fun and making new friendships, showing their school spirit and care for each other and the world around them. Literacy Day is a perfect all-school activity underpinning of our mission and values as a school community."